September 11: Who Needs Nostradamus?

Join the Discussion "9/11/02... the anniversary of the suicide attacks on the WTC. The USA is still in Afghanistan trying to route out Al Quaeda. At the moment it's business as usual. No one knows where Osama Bin Laden is. What are your predictions (or opinions) on any of this?" Answer Jim     Related Resources • The WTC Tragedy: Was It Prophesied? • Visions of the 911 Attack • Did Nostradamus Predict World War III?    From Other Guides • Articles and Commentary on the 9/11 Attack • September 11 Photo Gallery    Elsewhere on the Web • September 11: Mysteries, Early Signs

It didn't take long after the awful, tragic events of September 11, 2001 for people to begin seeking meaning in the devastation. People logged on to the Internet, and in record numbers sought information on what Nostradamus - the famed 16th century French prophet - might have predicted about the tragedy. Nostradamus is credited for predicting many other major events from his time to ours, including two world wars, so certainly he must have foreseen an event so cataclysmic and profoundly affecting as the collapse of the World Trade Center towers and the thousands of deaths involved.

Over the past year, people have exhausted themselves attempting to bend, twist and otherwise mutilate interpretations of Nostradamus's quatrains into something that looks like they pertain to the September 11 tragedy. Some even made up quatrains that Nostradamus never wrote and attributed them to the great seer. The truth is, however, that none of Nostradamus's writings quite fits. As we discussed about a year ago in the article "The WTC Tragedy: Was It Prophesied?", Nostradamus seems, by most accounts, to have missed this one.

Not everyone agrees that Nostradamus missed this prediction. David Ovason, for one, in this book Nostradamus Prophecies for America, makes the case that Quatrain 6:97 predicts the disaster (you can read Astrology Guide Anthony Peña's review of the book here), but such interpretations can often be highly creative exercises.

Why do we need Nostradamus to have said something about it? Why were people so hungry for verification from a long-dead prophet? Perhaps it's because we need to make sense of a seemingly senseless act: If the horrific events of that day had been prophesied, then perhaps they have meaning in a grander scheme that we cannot quite comprehend. It helps us cope with the horror. If a prophecy exists regarding 9/11, this somewhat twisted thinking goes, then perhaps it was meant to be; it was the hand of fate.

I'm not saying that people consciously want to think that 9/11 was meant to be. But on some crazy level, if it was prophesied, it puts a degree of order back in the universe. The insane events of that day - two airliners crashing into the twin towers, the suicide pilots who took thousands of lives along with their own, the sight of those magnificent buildings crumbling into great clouds of dust and debris, the people on the street fleeing in terror - they are all so extraordinary, so unreal and so powerfully disorienting that we had to find ways of touching reality again. Seeking Nostradamus's words were, for some people, a way to try to do that. A prophecy would help put meaning and order back into a world that, at that time, seemed so meaningless and chaotic.

While some sought out Nostradamus, others turned to their various religions for solace, but for the same purpose - to try to understand the why of such an event. Some found other prophecies in the so-called Bible Code... numerologists dissected 911 in every way imaginable... some people found a greater, more intricate conspiracy in 9/11... demonic faces were seen in the smoke from the burning WTC... some New Yorkers claimed to have seen the "ghosts" of the towers at night... hundreds of readers wrote in saying that they had had visions, dreams or just feelings predicting the events of September 11. Again, all for the same underlying purpose: to have it somehow make sense. Ironic how we search in things paranormal (beyond normal) - from God to prophets to ghosts - to help us feel normal.

Humans, for the most part, need to feel that their world, their lives make sense - that there's meaning and a greater purpose even in the face (perhaps especially in the face) of unthinkable tragedy. We need to think that somewhere in the midst of chaos is order on some cosmic or heavenly level. The alternative is too frightening. Humans need that hope.  

> Poll: Did you search the Internet for Nostradamus information after 9/11?

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